Racial stigmatization may change the brain

ISLAMABAD, July 14 (online): A study looks at the negative impact of stereotyping on personal motivation.

For many people there is a growing recognition that people of color and those belonging to marginalized groups are confronted on a daily basis with a society that undermines them.

A new study suggests that for those on the receiving end of such discriminatory attitudes, dealing with negative stigmatization may actually alter how the brain functions.

In the new study, exposure to negative stereotyping changed the behavior of the subcortical nucleus accumbens, a brain area associated with the anticipation of reward and punishment.

According to one of the study “What we’re seeing today is a close examination of the hardships and indignities that people have faced for a very long time because of their race and ethnicity.”

Ratner and his colleagues decided to investigate the effect of negative stereotyping on brain processing in Latinx.

Ratner has done previous work on the fatiguing, depression-inducing effects of life stressors. “In work I was involved in over a decade ago,” he recalls, “we showed that life stress can be associated with anhedonia, which is a blunted sensitivity to positive and rewarding information, such as winning money.” It can be the anticipation of reward that motivates an individual to persist in the face of adversities.

While other research has reported that exposure to stigma and discrimination can cause anger, racing thoughts, and even high arousal, Ratner is more interested in its exhausting effect on those who experience it. He notes that it can generate feelings of “oh, not again,” or “I’m so tired of this.”

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